The present invention relates in general to the preparation of brazeable metals for brazing and, more particularly, to the application of a brazing alloy to a part to be brazed during the formation of the part, for example by formation of a multielement blank or a composite blank including a parent metal and a braze alloy with the part then being formed from the multielement blank or the composite blank.
Brazing alloy will be used herein to refer to materials used to braze or solder one metallic part to another. Conventionally, a brazing alloy is clad or permanently applied by mechanical or chemical processes to surfaces of parts which are to be joined to other parts to form an assembly. Once assembled, the parts are heated to a temperature which melts the brazing alloy to fuse the assembly.
Parts can be preformed and then brazing alloy clad to the parts. More commonly, brazing sheet is formed by cladding a sheet of brazing alloy to a base sheet of a parent metal. The brazing sheet is then used to form clad parts.
Unfortunately, cladding preformed parts requires special cladding baths or other apparatus which can add substantially to production time and expense. Forming parts from clad brazing sheet also has disadvantages. For example, the parts which can be formed from clad brazing sheet are limited since many parts cannot be formed to required shapes while keeping the clad surface complete and properly located to be joined to mating parts.
Accordingly, there is a need for new techniques to fabricate clad parts quickly and inexpensively to supplement current fabrication techniques.